Continuous strand mats have been manufactured in the art using a variety of manufacturing methods. In the manufacture of continuous glass strand mats, for example, one process that has been used with considerable success is the process described and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,615,717. In this patent the mats produced are needled to consolidate the strands by mechanical entanglement to thereby give the mat integrity and permit it to be handled. In the process described in this patent, the strands that make up the mat are projected in a downward direction onto the surface of a moving conveyor. In their travel to that surface they are deflected from their natural direction as they issue from the feeder by a plate-like deflection surface shown in FIG. 2 of the patent that is placed so that it interrupts the strands as they are fed downward and bounces them off of that surface onto the conveyor. This has the effect of causing the strands to form an elliptical or sometimes circular pattern as they descend from the deflector surface to the conveyor surface. The feeders themselves are constantly being traversed across and above the conveyor surface and the deflector surface used to interrupt strand flow is attached to the reciprocating feeders. The strands may be formed at fiber forming bushings and fed directly therefrom as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,883,333. The strands may also be fed forming packages which are stacked in creels and from which the already formed strands are passed to the reciprocating feeders. Use of either form is well known in the art and is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,340,406, which also describes, in general, the reciprocating feeders employed in the art to produce continuous strand mats, and glass fiber mats in particular.
While the above described procedure of strand handling has been found to be beneficial in producing continuous glass strands, the market place in which the mats produced by this process continues to require improvement in the quality of the laminates made using these mats as reinforcements. This demand for higher quality by the end user laminators and their customers translate into more stringent requirements of the resin suppliers and, of course, for the suppliers of the reinforcing mats. One of the requirements that is being pursued vigorously is that of mat density uniformity from side to side and along the length of the mat. Improvements in this property are being requested and must be met if the quality of the finished laminates is to reach the levels required today in the market place. The applicant has by virtue of the instant invention developed an improvement in the aforementioned process that has improved significantly the uniformity of continuous strand mat made by that process.